Apple doubles 3G over-the-air app purchase size to 20MB

Is the App Store being prepared for iPad software?

We received a hot tip fron Pocket Gamer buddy Ruben this morning (oo-er missus), pointing out that Apple has evidentally doubled the size of applications that can be downloaded over 3G or cellular data.

Previously, games and apps were capped at 10MB if you wanted to download them without using a wi-fi connection, which has now been bumped up to a maximum size of 20MB.

It might not sound like a massive difference, but it's likely to have quite an impact for developers. Many game and app creators deliberately whittle their software down to less than 10MB to make them more accessible to iPhone users, and still put out some very impressive - and small - products.

Double the available app size for remote users should therefore make for some doubly impressive products. In all likelyhood this is in preparation for the inherently larger size of iPad games and apps.

Quite what the mobile operators think of this, we wouldn't like to say, but a tip of the hat definitely has to go to Apple for this small but important tweak to the App Store.